Police have smashed a transnational drug trafficking racket operating between Ethiopia’s famed Shashamane area and Kenya.
Sleuths have now identified the Moyale –Isiolo Highway as the new bhang trafficking route.
Drug traffickers have been traveling for over 600 kilometers from Moyale to Nairobi and back where bhang smuggled from Ethiopia is transported into the country through porous borders.
The drug lords are now evading their traditional corridors in an effort to beat police surveillance.
Previously, traffickers of bhang were known to smuggle their narcotics into the country through the porous borders of Kenya and Tanzania.
The Kenya –Uganda border in Malaba is also known as a drug trafficking corridor.
Besides changing the trafficking highways, the dealers have also devised new ways of concealing their wares.
For instance, the dealers have gone to the extent of stripping the entire roof or sideways of a lorry, stashing the drugs inside the body of the vehicle after which the vehicle is welded again.
This makes it hard for police, even using narcotic trained dogs- to sniff the contraband.
On reaching their destination, the vehicle’s roof or side body is carefully opened using welding machines and the drugs removed.
Other methods that the crafty drug traffickers have been using is concealing the drugs in fuel tankers and water browsers, according to police investigations.
A lorry, ferrying water tanks from Moyale to Nairobi was last week was impounded by the police who found 166 kilograms of bhang hidden under the water tanks.
The criminals had welded a new compartment on the body of the lorry where they stuffed drugs before placing the water tanks.
This makes it hard for even a hawk-eyed policeman manning a roadblock from detecting the drugs.
On Saturday, anti-narcotic deputy boss Janet Shako revealed that bhang traffickers had found a new market in northern Kenya where they have been obtaining the drugs from Shashamane, Ethiopia.
Shako led anti-narcotic investigators in an operation to offload close to 20 kilograms of bhang found concealed in two lorries.
The vehicles were impounded by the police in Isiolo town on Friday night on suspicion that they were ferrying bhang to Nairobi.
Investigators and Journalists witnessed as welders stripped the roofs and body of the two lorries apart and bales of what is believed to be bhang recovered.
The amount of bhang recovered on Saturday was yet to be revealed but investigators estimate that the consignment could be worth over Sh20 million at street value.
The drugs were found stashed on the roof of the Lorries and carefully welded to totally conceal the contrabands.
Shako said anti-narcotic investigators had increased surveillance after it emerged that money derived from the sale of drugs was being used to fund terrorism.
She said a multi-agency team had been formed to survey all major highways know for the transportation of drugs.
“The Isiolo –Moyale route has become a major transportation route but our hawk–eyed agencies have put in place stringent measures,” Shako said.
Four men and a woman have since been arrested by the police over the incident.
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